Sutton Place Hotel contractor fined by WorkSafeBC after workers injured

Hard Hammer Construction was fined almost $70,000 for a January 2011 incident at Revelstoke Mountain Resort that left two workers injured.

According to WorkSafeBC, the two workers were injured on January 26, 2011, while working on building two at the Sutton Place Hotel, when the temporary welds on a steel beam they were standing under failed and fell about three metres. One person was grazed by the beam and the other received “serious crushing injuries to his foot.”

The report says that on Jan. 25, 2011, a crew tack-welded a 22-foot long steel H-beam on the new hotel building at the resort. The crane that put the beam in place was removed and no support system was placed under the beam.

The following day, two crane operators were standing under the beam as welders finished welding the beam in place. The tack welds failed, causing the beam to fall more than three metres and striking the two operators, seriously injuring one of them.

The WorkSafeBC investigation report finds numerous faults with the worksite. There was a lack of safety information, no shop and field drawings, and poor welding equipment and conditions.

“The employer did not provide instruction in a safe procedure for erecting the steel roof structure,” the report states, adding that “during the construction and erection of a structure this employer had not provided the workers with adequate information, instruction, training, and supervision.”

The company had been fined previously in 2009 when it was known as Shearwall Contracting. On that occasion, the company was fined $61,398.50 when the superintendent in charge of construction at the Sutton Place Hotel interfered with two WorkSafeBC officers conducting an inspection.